I think that training birds or marine mammals or any other wildlife for the profit and entertainment of the audience is wrong.It's okay if people train their parrot to fly freely, but when they do it for commercial reasons, then the love for that animal is questionable. We should ban shows with marine mammals or birds.

Last edited by Darko on Thu Apr 19, 2018 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree completely that training birds to free-fly for a show is wrong but why do you think that people train their birds to free-flight when there is a high risk to the bird? You don't actually think that they do it to benefit the bird, do you?

When I fly with my paraglider or do skydiving I have greater chance of making my life shorter but it's still better life then living unadventurous safe life inside an apartment, and when we; fly,run, ski, ride a bike or drive a fast car and rapidly move through space our entire metal and body chemistry changes in a matter of seconds. This is because all of our senses of sight, sound, touch and hearing shift into an entirely different gear. The simple task of knowing what is going on around us when we are moving at a normal pace becomes a very complicated three dimensional puzzle of super-fast decisions. Our brain has to learn to figure out what important things are changing while everything is changing around us. As we achieve the ability to operate on this much higher level, we become something of a Superhero that changes who we are and the way we experience life. The same thing happens to a bird when he has the freedom to fine tune his flying skills.You can spend lots of money on full spectrum lights that rarely work properly, or spend a few minutes outside each week.For a bird to benefit from even the best indoor full spectrum lighting system it is necessary to have a very high intensity light source very close to the bird for several hours a day. If the light source is not intense enough to eventually cause sunburn it is of little benefit. Outdoor intensity is hundreds of times greater and makes contact with the entire bird. Inside light sources are too low to make a difference and usually illuminate only one side of the bird at a time.Without lots of exercise the best diet will not maintain adequate bone density. Muscles pulling on bones build bones with available calcium. As a bird flies a great deal of stress is put on all of the bones making them denser and stronger. To maintain adequate bone density as an adult a young parrot needs to aggressively exercise to develop very dense bones so they can maintain bone density as they get older.It is important not to confuse passive play with toys and flapping wings on top of the cage as activities that encourage bone and muscle development. The activities must involve weight bearing or resistance exercises. A parrot can only achieve these goals through flight.Wild parrots fly for miles and do not pant when they land. Most parrots cannot run across a room without becoming oxygen deprived.Without a fit cardiovascular system nothing else really matters. Parrots suffer from all of the same problems inactive people do. For 20 years veterinary medicine has been preoccupied with learning about basic health and disease control just to make the average parrot “well”, soon they will start considering your pets “fitness”. Can you visualize the parrot stress test of the future? Yes, you can do an EKG on a parrot.

Yes, you are correct on all your points but none of them actually answers the question I posed to you. Yes, full spectrum lights are not enough for the birds to produce enough vit D3 and, yes, they need to fly to keep a healthy respiratory system and yes, flight creates specific and necessary neural paths in their brains and yes, flight makes them more self-assured and dissipates stress and sexual hormones from their bloodstream. You are not going to get an argument from me on any of these points because I have been getting on my soapbox about them for many, many years but none of these points actually support free-flight. They just support flight and direct exposure to sunlight but not free-flight. So, I ask you again, why do you think that the majority of people want to free-fly their birds?

I cannot tell you on behalf of other people, but I can tell you why I decided to train my parrots so they can fly freely....When I was 6 years old my dad found a jackdaw that had fallen from the nest. He raised jackdaw successfully, despite the fact that he never had any experience with birds. When jackdaw started to eat on his own, we set him free, but it came back and started to follow my dad as his own shadow. The fact that I experienced what is like to have flighted bird that will come back and have complete trust in you (early in my childhood predetermined me to try that again) Now I'm 37 years old and more than 2 years ago I successfully manage to train my lovebirds, it was up and down journey. It wasn't easy but they are perfect now. I don't have any problem with my lovebirds anymore and I can take them anywhere. I love birds and I would never be satisfied to keep my bird indoors. I'm happiest in the world when I see my parrots flying like arrows and open sky is only cage they will ever know.(I think that my parrots are happy to) Plus, they constantly eat fresh tree blossoms and fresh grass, clay, mud and they learned how to drink water from the river. It's just more fun, all this training paid off in the end...

Did the jackdaw lived his entire life with your father or did he, at some point in time, fly away? Because a young bird is one thing but a fully sexually developed bird wants nothing more than to breed... I mean, after all, ALL birds leave their parents sooner or later. My grandmother and I used to raise quakers not to keep as pets but to save them from death and even though they were hand-fed and loved us, they all ended up leaving us to live with the wild quakers flocks. Granted that there are no wild flocks of lovebirds anywhere else but in Africa but, if I were. you, I would not be so sure that my birds will not fly away one day. I do hope from the bottom of my heart that I am wrong and you are right though because Lord knows I would not want anything to happen to your birds but I think. you are overestimating their affection for you...

Jackdaw stayed with us 3 years after that started more and more to spend a time with a wild birds, and one day just vanished... I hope that he found a partner and manage to survive in the wild. With my lovebirds is a different story (my parrots think that I am theirs partner, because of that they regurgitate food for me and that can be annoying; -)

Ahhh, see? Once the jackdaw was sexually mature, he left - which is what's to be expected. But, even though your lovebirds might regurgitate for you, it's not as if you can actually be their mate - you can't have sex with them, you can't court, you can't nest, etc. Also, please take into consideration that the fact that they regurgitate for you is NOT a good thing because it means that they are overly hormonal [and they are only two years old!!!]